About this title: Thirty years after his classic "The Great Railway Bazaar," Theroux revisits Eastern Europe, Central Asia, India, China, Japan, and Siberia. Wherever he goes, his omnivorous curiosity and unerring eye for detail never fail to inspire, enlighten, inform, and entertain.
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780618418879ISBN:0618418873
Description: Good. Used item may show library stamps, stickers and marks. Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780618418879ISBN:0618418873
Description: Good. Used item may show library stamps, stickers and marks. Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Description: Acceptable. 2009-Paperback----Used-Acceptable-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Description: Used-Good. Good condition. very clean and bright pages; book has minor shelf wear; tight spine uncreased but slightly slanted; Delivery confirmation available for every item shipped. Reliable customer service and no-hassle return policy. read more
Description: Very good. 2008 Houghton-Mifflin Press Hardcover Edition. Slight wear to Dust Jacket, text clean with strong binding. Ships Fast! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Date Published: 2008-08-18
ISBN-13:9780618418879ISBN:0618418873
Description: New. Paperback ARC with same cover & publisher stickers. This book is the same isbn, but is a paperback ARC. New, unread, unused & in perfect condition with no damaged or missing pages. Great Copy. Ships Lightning Fast. read more
Description: Like New. 2009-Paperback-May contain minor shelf-wear. Otherwise, volume un-read and in "As-New" condition. -Used-Like New-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Mariner Books
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780547237930ISBN:0547237936
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: PENGUIN BOOKS LTD Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780141015729ISBN:0141015721
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 496 pages. Offers a chronicle of change and an exploration of how travel is 'the saddest of pleasures'. map (Paperback) read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Date Published: 2008-08-18
ISBN-13:9780618418879ISBN:0618418873
Description: NEW. Hardcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780618418879. read more
"I enjoyed this book, but I wonder if I'd enjoyed it more or less if I'd read The Great Railway Bazaar (whose train journey he retraces 30 years later in this book) first. What was interesting (in a meta-literary way) is to see the seeds of The Elephanta Suite being sowed during the India part of his trip and how he can focus primarily on the train itself for so long and still keep you hooked through a succession of ever drearier train stations, crippling poverty and dodgy checkpoints.
The real beauty in Paul Theroux's writing is when there is sympathy and disgust with what he sees but almost no romance, and despite his mooning over the foibles of his previous trip during which his marriage fell apart and he questioned the whole meaning of what he was doing, and the occasional bout of self-celebration, this book saw thing through a pretty clear lens. For instance, it bums him completely out to discover he has arrived at a place during a big festival, because it means the shops will be closed, everyone will be either absent or abnormally excited; he seeks the truth of everyday experience.
The best part, the must-read chapter in here, is the firsthand account of the bizarre form of totalitarianism that went/goes down in Turkmenistan, where citizens are forced to smile all the time and hang on every word of their megalomaniac leader Turkmenbashi. I really wish he would write an entire book about that place.
The thing that was a bit of a letdown is how he meticulously got from London to Tokyo in 300 pages, but pretty much glossed through the return visit on the Trans-Siberian Railway going back, though truthfully, by the time he got to Japan, I was ready for this trip to be over. Perhaps there is a great novel being extruded about that leg of the trip."
"33 years on from The Great Railway Bazaar, the travel book that made his name, Paul Theroux is back on the train. He takes a journey through Europe, Asia, Japan and back through Russia and the former soviet block states.
I really enjoyed going on this journey with Paul Theroux. His scathing edge has mellowed from earlier books. The critics were divided with many opining that it's far too long and rambling. However, I enjoyed the diversions, meetings with other authors and his philosophiziing comments on life. Given that you are very unlikely to visit a lot of the coutnries he passed through, there was also much to educate all presented in his usual literary style. I find that a lot of people that don't like his books have taken a personal view as the character of the man. I like spending time with him on his travels and I don't really know what that says about me!"
"I've always been a fan of Paul Theroux's writing, albeit not his grouchiness, but this book combines both his eye for detail and real sense of empathy. Probably a truer portrait of the lands he visits than a guidebook or news reporting and the best book I've ever read in terms of explaining what it's like to travel, and travel alone, I think this is his masterpiece. Incidentally, you don't have to have read The Great Railway Bazaar in order to appreciate it, I did shortly beforehand and it didn't make much of a difference to my appreciation or understanding."
"Thirty years ago Theroux took the Orient Express and many other trains from London to the Far East and returned. That trip was captured in The Great Railway Bazaar, which made his reputation. Now he is repeating the trip and recording his experiences in the Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
Theroux travels alone, he considers himself to be a ghost. Like ghosts he is revisiting his past life and also like ghosts he is not noticed. He says,
"Travel can induce such a distinct and nameless feeling of strangeness and disconnection in me that I feel insubstantial, like a puff of smoke, merely a ghost, a creepy revenant from the underworld, unobserved and watchful among real people, wandering, listening while remaining unseen.
Ghosts have all the time in the world, another pleasure of long-distance aimlessness-traveling at half speed on slow trains and procrastinating."
The essence of travel writing is reporting what you see, hear and, possibly your reaction to new places. Theroux goes further, the reader learns almost as much about him as is learned about the locations he visits. We quickly learn that his first trip was a disaster. He was gone for six months and had little money. Rather than exploring new venues, he drowned his loneliness in whatever bars were available. Communications were difficult, there were no cell phones. When he returned he found that his wife had taken a lover and a difficult divorce followed. He has since happily remarried.
This was a 20.000 mile trip through France, Germany, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Viet Nam, China, Japan and Russia. Wherever possible, Theroux traveled by train no matter how crowded, slow, old and dirty they were. Because no train was available, he took a bus or a plane a few times.
During the 30 year interval, Theroux became an established writer with more than 40 books, fiction and non-fiction, to his credit. His reputation helped. Frequently he was asked to lecture and he was able to meet with other world class authors like Pamuk in Turkey and Arthur C. Clarke, of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in Sri Lanka.
Many travel writers who are being paid by the very resorts, cruise lines and locations they are writing about have a rule: say nothing bad about your host. Theroux, who was traveling independently, ghostlike, avoids this rule. He did not like India, too many highly energetic people. He was appalled by the call centers in Mumbai and Bangalore. He could not understand the Laotian and Burmese people who were so willing to endure harsh dictatorships.
On the other hand he liked being in Viet Nam. The young people he met were born after 1973, the last year of the war, and had no personal memory of the conflict. Older Vietnamese remembered the war but held no animosity against Americans.
Theroux also liked northern Japan, Sapporo and the Hokkaido Island. It was winter with lots of snow, quiet, and unlike southern Japan, there were very few people.
Was Theroux faithful on the trip? He says so and was very lonely and anxious to see his wife. Nevertheless, he likes the seamy sides of towns, was solicited by numerous women and seemed to go out of his way to find them.
After flying from Niigata, Japan to Vladivostok, Theroux tired of the entire concept. Vladivostok was particularly dreary and cold. From there, he took the Trans Siberian Express to Moscow stopping only in Perm. It housed one of oldest gulag prisons and provided Theroux an extensive opportunity to comment on Russia's extremely repressive and torturous history.
He quickly arrives in Berlin where he is warm for the first time since Japan. Then it is onto Paris and London. Theroux concludes with,
"It's true that travel is the saddest of pleasures, the long-distance overland blues."
"Most people on earth are poor. Most places are blighted and nothing will stop the blight from getting worse. Travel gives you a glimpse of the past and the future, your own and other people's."
"But there are too many people and an enormous number of them spend their hungry days thinking of America as the Mother Ship. I could be a happy Thai, but there is no way on earth that I am less suited to living than that of an Indian, rich or poor. Most of the world is worsening, shrinking to a ball of bungled desolation. Only the old can see how gracelessly the world is aging and all that we have lost. Politicians are always inferior to their citizens. No one on earth is well governed. Is there hope, Yes. Most people I'd met, in chance encounters, were strangers who helped me on my way. And we lucky ghosts can travel wherever we want. The going is still good, because arrivals are departures.""
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